Why I Write #1

My father wrote newspaper headlines like a Zen master wrote haiku, with that much care and attention. He loved puns, and all sorts of wordplay, and would run through numerous headline iterations before settling on the final.

I was thinking about this the other night after a friend asked if my father was a writer, and if so, had influenced me to write.

“No,” I’d answered, “he was a newspaper editor.” But later I thought of the headlines, and then the column.

My dad worked for the Chicago Sun-Times, and rose to the position of Night News Editor. Which means he was responsible for the layout of the morning paper. And the headlines.

Previous to that, he’d held other editing positions with the paper, and previous to that he’d worked for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago American. Both of these were afternoon papers, and both of them are extinct.

He quit the Sun-Times shortly after Murdoch acquired it, although he was having doubts before that. The paper had been owned through much of its life, and in its earlier incarnation, the Chicago Sun, by the Marshall Field family, and it leaned leftwards, significantly at times. This all changed when Murdoch bought the paper in 1984 from the Fields, and immediately turned it into a tabloid full of scandal and sleaze.

Previous to that, Studs Terkel wrote a Sunday column for the paper. During the McCarthy era, Terkel became the subject of an FBI investigation, and the Sun-Times, facing mounting pressure, let him go. It was not their finest hour. However, it was an opportunity for my father, a devout jazz aficionado, to pitch a replacement column, one that reviewed jazz records. They accepted his pitch, and he began writing his jazz review column. I don’t know how many he wrote, I have a few of them, but the stint didn’t last long. Management was looking for something else.

There have also been a few trip journals, fishing journals, and the like over the years, but most of them fizzled out after a few pages.

Other than headlines, where my dad succeeded profoundly as a writer was in letters and the inscriptions he’d write in cards (birthday, anniversary, etc,). Here he seemed to find the freedom to be sensitive, kind, witty, insightful, and poignant, and I’ve saved many of these. They always meant a lot to me, because he had a difficult time, like many men, voicing emotion.

So, getting back to the other night, and my friend’s question, I can only say that yes, he was a writer. And yes, he did influence me to write. And I still haven’t reached his skill level at letters, card messages, or headlines. And probably never will.